Monday, May 1, 2017

Fresh off our First Amendment victory in Berkeley, California’s
Trump supporters and conservatives around the country rallied to hear President
Trump’s 100 Days Celebration Speech.

You know what? He’s doing a great job.

Of course, there are critics. One libertarian-leaning
millennial friend of me complained about how Trump spends so much time gloating
over accomplishments. My retort? His accomplishments are mine—are our
victories. Second, people can pound their chests when they have done great
things—Michael Jordan could trash-talk the best on the court because he ended
up besting them. Finally, I quipped: “If you don’t like, don’t listen. First
Amendment, Baby!”

And about the First Amendment ... Berkeley was a smash-hit
success for this sacred right But why? A bunch of conservatives stood their
ground in a liberal city. OK, but more importantly, we reasserted that every
inch of America is safe space for free speech. Over this past weekend, two
insights have re-emerged about these ongoing assaults on free speech.

The first one I had first learned from Ben Shapiro at the
University of Redlands. Before his speech, one of the many overpaid campus vice-chancellors
announced to the sold-out audience that the university maintained its
dedication to diversity, inclusion, and tolerance while opposing the bugaboos
of homophobia, xenophobia, and any other fill-in-the-blank phobias. How about
ailurophobia for the cat-haters?

Following the disclaimers, conservative wonks enjoyed
listening to Benji slaughter the secular leftist sacred cows. The most telling,
memorable phrase from his whole talk? “America is a safe space.” Indeed. Safety
defined as the right and opportunity to speak one’s mind and pursue happiness
free from arbitrary sanctions or suppression. Liberty is not a magic word to
justify invidious discrimination, but a state of being absent the opposing
confines of government force and fiat. If you don’t like what you hear, you are
free not to listen. You are not entitled, however, to shut down someone else’s
exercise of liberty, whether in speech, the press, individual conscience, etc. America is indeed a safe space, you liberal
pussy-hat wearing snowflakes. In third-world, communist countries, you are
forced to listen to the party line’s dogma and dreck—or you go to gulag.

The second insight deals with the whole “hate speech”
canard. Freedom of speech does include a license to hate. I hate illegal
immigration. Does that make it hate speech? I guess, in that general sense that
liberals love to jump into to justify their own hate speech, including “Keep
your hate speech off this campus!” or “Hang Trump!” The second hateful remark came
from a German professor at Fresno State University two months ago. His classes
were canceled, but not because of the content of the courses, mind you. His
tweet was more than hate, but a vicious threat to kill the President. Besides, his
inconsiderate rhetoric reflected poorly on the university—not that they don’t already
look bad to the thinking, reasoning world.

Free speech does not justify shouting “Fire” in a crowded
theater when there is no fire. But that scenario is not about speech. The
prohibitions comes from the imminent danger based on the statement.

Ann Coulter added further depth to this insight. Despite her
Berkeley no-show fail, I still respect her keen mind and strong consistency to root
out bigger issues underlying debates which can turn mundane.

This Sunday on ABC’s This Week with George
Step-on-All-Of-Us, Jonathan Karl rolled out the expected Berkeley-First
Amendment wrestling match, this time with Ann Coulter and Robert Reich
discussing free speech and its many discontents. Strangely enough, Coulter’s
most supporters included Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Robert Reich (even
though Reich blocked me on Twitter two months ago!). With Karl moderating,
Coulter dismissed the surface-level hustle over freedom of speech. It’s a given
from professors left and right that diverse intellects should exercise their
right to express their views.

Coulter plumbed the deeper vein of the problem when she
slammed the “hate speech” brand seared onto her proposed speech about illegal
immigration. Discussion of public policy is not hate speech in the slightest, she
indicated, but the necessary engine for good governance in our republic.

And there’s one more thing about this free speech/hate
speech brouhaha: this term “hate speech” has grown so broad as to be
meaningless. Ha Ha Ha!

How about this triggering truth: “There is no such thing as
hate speech.”

Why? Tagging any statement as “hateful” is subjective, lacking
clear standards. Wikipedia (not Wikileaks, which was hate speech to corrupt
Democrats) defines It’s not hate speech as much as hateful hearing hate speech
as “speech which attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as
gender, ethnic origin” etc. The offense lies with the hearer, not the speaker.
From George Carlin’s monologues or Don Rickles’ ribbings, everyone bursts out
laughing at the sharp, explicitly anti-PC retorts. Only the smug, razor-blade
Antifa snowflakes want to slash their lungs out because they have predetermined
such jibes as hateful.

Now let’s go one step further. In the end, it’s a power
struggle, fomented in the minds of the hateful hearers. Leftist organizations
smear un-leftist rhetoric as “hate speech” in order to shut down the opposition
and remove all challenges. Analyzing the high illegitimacy rates in black
communities or criticizing Islam becomes “hate speech”, even though the welfare
and safety of our country depend on having these discussions. The “hate speech”
controversy definitely explains why Middlebury College snowflakes shut down
Charles Murray earlier this month.

Once a brilliant tactic, this Alinskyite shaming and
threatening is now failing. The police are protecting conservatives so that
violence won’t silence. The problem is now exposed as hateful hearing, not hate
speech. So I say: “Suck it up buttercups, free speech is here to stay, whether
you hate it or not, and we Americans will safely speak our minds.”